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Monday, June 29, 2009

Potpourri

I am still traveling, so posts will still be erratic until towards the end of July. I did catch an internet connection long enough to find a list of web articles you may want to follow up on.

The most important comes first, the first meeting of the Decadal Survey. I will be unable to listen in; if anyone does and writes up a summary, I'll post it here.

JULY DECADAL SURVEY MEETING WEBCASTING

The National Research Council's Planetary Science Decadal Survey willwebcast all of the open sessions during the 6-8 July meeting of itsSteering Group. The webcast will be available at the following URL:

Cost overruns have bedeviled planetary programs from multiple agencies, but they are not unique to planetary programs. The journal Science's blog discusses the cost overruns on the United State's next generation of polar weather/climate satellites. To put it simply, the program has become a disaster of diminishing expectations and increasing costs. Note that the new cost estimate for the program, $14B is greater than NASA's budget for a decade of planetary exploration.

Space.com has a long article on ESA and NASA's planned collaboration on the ExoMars mission. The current plans have NASA providing the launch vehicle for ESA's ExoMars rover and NASA's Mars Science orbiter. (The latter will focus on locating the sources of methane and other short-lived gases in the Martian atmosphere.) From the article, it sounds like there will have to be substantial engineering work to make this happen. The article also discusses why ESA and NASA will not be able to collaborate on a dark energy mission.

About Me

You can contact me at futureplanets1@gmail.com with any questions or comments.
I have followed planetary exploration since I opened my newspaper in 1976 and saw the first photo from the surface of Mars. The challenges of conceiving and designing planetary missions has always fascinated me. I don't have any formal tie to NASA or planetary exploration (although I use data from NASA's Earth science missions in my professional work as an ecologist).
Corrections and additions always welcome.